Book 1

Those who praise Pythagoras of Samos report this of him: that he was not yet an Ionian, but had once been Euphorbus at Troy; that he had come to life again after dying, and had died as the songs of Homer tell; that he refused to wear clothing made from dead animals, and kept himself pure of all food that comes from living things, and of sacrifice. For he would not stain the altars with blood; rather the honey-cake and frankincense and the singing of a hymn—these were what came to the gods from this man—and he knew that the gods welcome such offerings more than the hecatombs and the knife laid upon the sacrificial basket. For he was in fellowship with the gods, and learned from them in what way they take pleasure in men and in what way they are displeased; and from them too he spoke of nature. The rest of mankind, he said, only guess at the divine and hold opinions about it that are inconsistent with one another; but to him Apollo himself had come, acknowledging that it was he in person, and Athena and the Muses and other gods had been with him, though they had not acknowledged themselves, gods whose forms and names men did not yet know. And whatever Pythagoras declared, his disciples held to be law, and they honoured him as one who had come from Zeus; and silence concerning the divine was a practice among them. For they heard many divine and secret things, which it would have been hard for them to keep had they not first learned that to be silent is also a form of speech. They say too that Empedocles of Acragas trod this same path of wisdom. For the lines "Farewell; I go among you as a god immortal, no longer mortal," and "For once I have already been a girl and a boy," and the ox at Olympia, which he is said to have made of pastry and offered in sacrifice—these would be the words of one who approved the way of Pythagoras. They record many other things about those who pursued wisdom in the manner of Pythagoras; but it is not fitting for me to touch on these now, since I am hastening toward the work I have set myself to complete.

For Apollonius practised a discipline akin to theirs, and approached wisdom in a more divine way than Pythagoras, and rose above tyrannies; and though he lived in times neither very ancient nor yet recent, men do not yet know him for the true wisdom which he practised both philosophically and soundly. One praises this in the man, another that; and some, because he consorted with the magi of Babylon and the Brahmans of India and the Naked Sages of Egypt, take him for a magician and slander him as one whose wisdom was gained by sorcery—judging him wrongly. For Empedocles and Pythagoras himself and Democritus, though they kept company with magi and said many supernatural things, were not yet drawn down into the craft; and Plato, who travelled to Egypt and blended much of the teaching of the prophets and priests there into his own discourses, and like a painter laid colours upon outlines already sketched, was never thought to practise magic, although he was envied for his wisdom beyond all other men. Nor would foreseeing and foreknowing many things lay Apollonius open to the charge of this craft; or else Socrates too will stand accused for what he foreknew from his divine sign, and Anaxagoras for what he foretold. And who does not know that Anaxagoras, when there was the least likelihood of rain at Olympia, came into the stadium under a sheepskin in expectation of a downpour; and that he foretold a house would fall, and did not lie, for it fell; and that he prophesied night would come out of day, and that stones would be cast down from heaven about Aegospotami, and was proved true? Yet men set these things down to the wisdom of Anaxagoras, while they take from Apollonius the power of foreknowing through wisdom, and say he did these things by the art of the magician. It seems to me, then, that I should not overlook the ignorance of the many, but should give an exact account of the man—both in the times at which he said or did anything, and in the modes of wisdom by which he came near to being thought a divine and supernatural being. I have gathered my material partly from the cities that loved him, partly from the temples whose ordinances, already grown lax, he restored, partly from what others said of him, and partly from his own letters. For he wrote letters to kings, sophists, philosophers, to the men of Elis and Delphi, to Indians and Egyptians, on the subject of the gods, of customs, of conduct, of laws; and wherever anything was amiss, he set it right. But the more precise details I gathered in this way.

There was a man named Damis, not without wisdom, who once dwelt in ancient Nineveh. This man joined Apollonius in the study of philosophy, and has written an account of his travels, which he says he shared, and of his maxims and discourses, and of all that he said by way of prophecy. And a kinsman of Damis brought the tablets of these memoirs, hitherto unknown, to the knowledge of the empress Julia. Since I belonged to her circle—for she esteemed and welcomed all rhetorical discourse—she commanded me to recast these compositions and to attend to their style; for the writer of Nineveh had told his story clearly, but not gracefully. I came also upon a book by Maximus of Aegae, which had gathered all that Apollonius did at Aegae; and a will too was written by Apollonius, from which one may learn that he became one who exalted philosophy toward the divine. For no heed should be paid to Moeragenes, who composed four books about Apollonius and yet was ignorant of much concerning the man. How I gathered together these scattered materials, and how I took pains to compose them, I have now said. May this work bring honour to the man to whom it is dedicated, and benefit to those who love learning; for they may indeed learn what they do not yet know.

Apollonius, then, had for his native city Tyana, a Greek city in the nation of the Cappadocians; his father bore the same name; the family was ancient and traced back to the founders of the city; his wealth surpassed that of the people there, and the country was rich. While his mother was carrying him, an apparition came to her—Proteus, the Egyptian divinity who changes his shape in Homer. She, in no way afraid, asked him what she would bring forth. "Me," he said. "And who are you?" she asked. "Proteus," he answered, "the Egyptian god." Now what manner of being Proteus was in wisdom, why should I explain to those who have heard the poets—how he was of many forms and ever changing and beyond capture, and seemed to know and to foreknow all things? And one must keep Proteus in mind, especially when the story as it goes on shows the man to have foreknown more than Proteus did, and to have risen above many things baffling and impossible, at the very moment when he seemed most caught.

He is said to have been born in a meadow, beside which a temple has now been built to him. And let no one be ignorant of the manner of his birth. As his mother neared the hour of her delivery, a dream came to her, bidding her walk into the meadow and gather flowers. And when she came, her maids gave their attention to the flowers, scattered over the meadow, while she herself was carried off to sleep, lying down upon the grass. Swans, then, that the meadow fed, formed a chorus around her as she slept, and raising their wings, as is their way, they all sang out together—for there was a breath of the west wind too in the meadow—and she started up at the song and gave birth; for any shock is enough to bring on a birth, even before its time. The people of the country say that at the very moment he was born a thunderbolt, which seemed about to fall to earth, rose up into the upper air and vanished aloft; whereby the gods, I think, were revealing and foreshowing how this man would be conspicuous and above all things on earth, near to the gods, and all that he became.

There is near Tyana a water of Zeus the God of Oaths, as they call it—they name it Asbamaean—of which a spring rises up cold, and yet it bubbles like a heated cauldron. To those who keep their oaths this water is kind and sweet, but on those who swear falsely justice follows hard upon their heels; for it strikes their eyes and hands and feet, and they are seized with dropsy and wasting, and they cannot even depart, but are held there on the spot and lament beside the water, confessing the oaths they have broken. Now the people of the country say that Apollonius was the son of Zeus, but the man himself calls himself the son of Apollonius.

As he advanced to the age for letters, he showed strength of memory and force of application; his speech was Attic, nor was his accent corrupted by the dialect of the nation; and all eyes were turned upon him, for he was conspicuous in beauty. When he was fourteen, his father took him to Tarsus, to Euthydemus from Phoenicia. Now Euthydemus was a good rhetorician and undertook his education; but the boy, while he kept to his teacher, thought the temper of the city strange and unfavourable for the study of philosophy. For nowhere do men cling more to luxury; mockers and insolent men are they all, and the people of Tarsus give more thought to fine linen than to wisdom; and the river Cydnus flows through the city, beside which they sit like waterfowl. Hence the words "Cease being drunk on your water" are spoken by Apollonius to them in a letter. So he removed his teacher, having asked his father's leave, to Aegae nearby, where there was quiet suited to one who would philosophize, and pursuits more fitting for a young man, and a temple of Asclepius, and Asclepius himself manifest to men. There the followers of Plato and of Chrysippus and the men of the Peripatos joined him in the study of philosophy, and he gave ear also to the doctrines of Epicurus, for he did not despise these either; but the doctrines of Pythagoras he grasped with a certain ineffable wisdom. For his teacher in the doctrines of Pythagoras was not very earnest, nor did he practise philosophy with energy, being a slave to his belly and to sexual pleasure, and modelled upon Epicurus. This was Euxenus of Heraclea in Pontus, who knew the opinions of Pythagoras as birds know what they learn from men; for the "Good morning" and "Fare well" and "Zeus be gracious" and the like the birds pronounce without knowing what they say, and without any goodwill toward men, but having their tongues merely trained. But Apollonius, like young eagles which while their wings are still soft fly beside their parents, being trained by them in flight, but when they are able to soar, fly above their parents—especially if they perceive them to be gluttonous and flying near the ground for the sake of carrion—so too Apollonius, while still a boy, attended Euxenus and was led by him along the path of discourse; but when he reached his sixteenth year, he set out upon the life of Pythagoras, having been winged toward it by some higher power. Yet he did not cease to love Euxenus, but having asked of his father a country house for him, in which there were gentle gardens and springs, he said: "Live in your own way, but I shall live the way of Pythagoras."

When Euxenus, supposing that he was laying hold of some great purpose, asked him where he would begin, "Where the physicians do," he said; "for they too, by purging the bowels, keep some from falling ill at all, and cure others." And having said this, he renounced the eating of living things, as neither pure and as dulling the mind, and ate dried fruits and vegetables, saying that all things the earth herself gives are pure. Wine too he said was a pure drink, coming to men from a plant so kindly to them, but that it was opposed to the right constitution of the mind, troubling the ether within the soul. After this purification of his body, he made bare feet his adornment, and clothed himself in linen, refusing what comes from animals; he let his hair grow long, and lived in the temple. Those about the temple were amazed at him, and Asclepius once said to the priest that he rejoiced to heal the sick with Apollonius as his witness; and on account of this fame the Cilicians themselves and those round about flocked to Aegae to see him. And the Cilician saying, "Where are you running? To see the youth?"—this was spoken about him, and gained the honour of a proverb.

It is right not to pass over even what happened in the temple, when one is telling the life of a man who was held in account even by the gods. For a young Assyrian came to Asclepius, and lived in luxury though sick, and spent his life in drink; or rather he was dying, for he was held by dropsy, and taking pleasure in drunkenness he neglected dryness. He was therefore neglected by Asclepius for this reason, and not even in a dream did the god visit him. When he complained of this, the god stood over him and said, "If you talk with Apollonius, you will be the better for it." So he came to Apollonius and said: "What good might I gain from your wisdom? For Asclepius bids me be with you." "That," said he, "which will be worth much to you as things now stand. For you want health, I suppose?" "Yes, by Zeus," he said, "the health which Asclepius promises but does not give." "Hush," he said; "for to those who are willing he gives it; but you do things contrary to your disease. For you give yourself to luxury, and you heap rich food upon bowels that are moist and corrupted, and you pour mud upon water." This, I think, he prophesied more clearly than the wisdom of Heraclitus; for Heraclitus said that one suffering from this affliction needed someone to make drought out of flood—words neither easy to understand nor plain—whereas Apollonius brought the youth back to health by interpreting the wise saying clearly.

Seeing once a great quantity of blood upon the altar, and the sacrificial victims laid out upon it—Egyptian oxen and great swine that had been slaughtered, some of them being flayed, others cut up—and two golden vessels dedicated, set with stones of the most Indian and marvellous kind, he came to the priest and said: "What is this? For someone is making a splendid gift to the god." "You will wonder the more," said the priest, "that this man, who has never yet supplicated here, nor stayed the time that others stay, nor yet gained health from the god, nor even has what he came to ask for—for he seems to have arrived only yesterday—yet sacrifices thus lavishly. He says he will sacrifice still more and dedicate still more, if Asclepius receives him. He is among the very richest; for in Cilicia at least he possesses more substance than all the Cilicians together; and he supplicates the god to give him back one of his eyes, which has fallen out." But Apollonius, as he was wont to do when grown old, fixing his eyes upon the ground, asked, "What is his name?" And when he heard it, he said: "It seems to me, priest, that we should not receive this man in the temple, for he comes here defiled, and has met with his affliction for no good reason; and the very fact of sacrificing lavishly before obtaining anything from the god is the act not of one who sacrifices, but of one who begs pardon for wretched and cruel deeds." So spoke Apollonius. And Asclepius, standing over the priest by night, said: "Let so-and-so depart, keeping his own goods; for he deserves not even to keep his other eye." So the priest, inquiring about the man, found that this Cilician had a wife who had a daughter by a former marriage; and he was in love with the girl and lived shamelessly with her, nor did he even take care to hide it. For the mother, coming upon them in bed, put out both the girl's eyes and one of his, driving the pins of her brooches into them.

That in sacrificing or dedicating one should not exceed due measure, he taught in this way. When many had once gathered in the temple, just after the Cilician had been driven out, he asked the priest thus: "Are the gods just?" "Most just," he said. "And are they intelligent?" "And what," said he, "is more intelligent than the divine?" "Do they know the affairs of men, or are they without experience of them?" "Why, this," said he, "is the chief respect in which the gods surpass men: that men, through weakness, do not even know their own affairs, while it belongs to the gods to know both theirs and ours." "All most excellent, priest," said he, "and most true. Since, then, they know all things, it seems to me that the man who comes to the house of a god, conscious of good deeds in himself, should pray such a prayer as this: 'O gods, give me what is owed me.' For surely, priest, to the holy what is owed is good things, and to the base the opposite; and the gods, acting well, send away whomever they find sound and unwounded by vice, crowning him, not with golden crowns, but with all good things; but whomever they see branded and corrupt, they leave to justice, being angry with them only so far as that they dared to enter even temples while unclean." And glancing at the same time toward Asclepius, "You play the philosopher, Asclepius," he said, "in your ineffable wisdom that is akin to yourself, by not allowing the base to come here, not though they should bring you all the treasures of India and Sardis. For it is not in honour of the divine that they offer and dedicate these things, but to purchase justice, which you do not grant them, being most just." Many such things he discoursed in the temple while still in his youth. And these too belong to his time at Aegae.

There was a governor of the Cilicians, an insolent man and corrupt in matters of love. Word of the beauty of Apollonius came to him; and he, bidding farewell to the business he was engaged in—he was holding an assize at Tarsus—set out for Aegae, saying that he himself was ill and had need of Asclepius. And coming to Apollonius as he walked apart, he said, "Commend me to the god." But he replied: "And what need have you of one to commend you, if you are a good man? For the gods welcome the worthy even without those who introduce them." "Because, by Zeus, Apollonius," he said, "the god has made you his guest-friend, but not me yet." "Why, nobility of character was my introducer," he said, "which I use as far as a young man can; and I am a servant and companion of Asclepius. If you too care for nobility, go boldly to the god and pray for whatever you wish." "By Zeus," he said, "I will, if I may first pray to you." "And what will you pray to me for?" "What one should pray to the beautiful for: we pray them to share their beauty and not to grudge their bloom." He said this with affected softness, making his eyes melt, and writhing himself, and in short all that such wanton and notorious men do. But Apollonius, looking at him fiercely and with a glare, said, "You are mad, you abomination." And when the man not only took this with anger, but even threatened to cut off his head, Apollonius, laughing, cried out, "O the day of so-and-so!" And it was the third day from that on which executioners killed that insolent man along the road, on the charge that with Archelaus, king of Cappadocia, he had been plotting revolt against the Romans. These things and many such are recorded by Maximus of Aegae, who was even thought worthy of imperial letters, being held in high repute for his eloquence.

When he heard that his father was dead, he ran to Tyana, and buried him with his own hands beside the tomb of his mother—she too had died not long before—and the property, which was splendid, he divided with his brother, who was dissolute and a lover of drink. His brother was in his twenty-third year and of an age not to be under guardians, while he himself was twenty, and the laws still subjected him to guardians. So, having stayed again at Aegae and made the temple both a Lyceum and an Academy—for it rang with every kind of philosophy—he returned to Tyana, now a man and master of his own affairs. And when someone said to him that it became him to bring his brother to his senses and to change his way of life, "This will seem rash," he said; "for how should I, a young man, bring an elder to his senses? But as far as I can, I will heal him of these afflictions." So he gives him half of his own portion, saying that his brother needed more, and he himself little; and gaining ascendancy over him and drawing him wisely toward obedience to one who corrects, he said: "Our father, who taught and admonished us, has departed; you alone are left to me, and I, I suppose, to you. So if I should err in anything, be my counsellor and heal my failings; and if you yourself should err in anything, bear with me as I teach you." And thus, as those who soothe horses hard to rein and not easily led bring them to obedience, so he brought his brother to compliance and reformed him of his faults, which were many; for he was a slave to dice and wine, and would go revelling after courtesans, vain of the hair which he tended even with dyes, swaggering and walking with his head in the air. When matters between him and his brother were well, he turned now to his other kinsmen, and won over those of them who were in need with the rest of his substance, leaving little for himself; whereupon he said that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, who left his property to herds and flocks, philosophized for sheep rather than for men, and that Crates of Thebes, who threw his substance into the sea, was of use neither to men nor to sheep. And since Pythagoras was praised for the saying that a man should go to no woman but his own, "That," he said, "was laid down by Pythagoras for others; but I, for my part, would neither marry nor ever come to the embrace of love"—surpassing even the saying of Sophocles. For Sophocles said that in reaching old age he had escaped a raging and savage master; but Apollonius, through virtue and self-control, was not overcome by it even in his youth, but, though young and strong of body, mastered it and lorded it over the raging thing. Yet nevertheless some slander him in matters of love, alleging that he committed an error of passion, and on that account spent a year abroad among the nation of the Scythians—a man who never went to the Scythians nor was ever carried away into the passions of love. Indeed not even Euphrates ever slandered the man in matters of love, although he forged false writings against him, as we shall show in our account of Euphrates; for Euphrates was at variance with Apollonius, since the latter checked him in everything he did for the sake of money, and drew him away from money-making and from trafficking in wisdom. But let these things be deferred by me to their proper time.

When Euxenus once asked Apollonius why he did not write, though he held noble opinions and used a style of approved and elevated expression, "Because," he said, "I have not yet kept silence." And from then on he resolved that he must keep silence, and he held his tongue; but his eyes and his mind read much, and stored up much in memory. Indeed, when he reached a hundred years of age, he was stronger in memory than Simonides; and a certain hymn of his to Memory was sung, in which he says that all things are withered by time, but that time itself is ageless and immortal through memory. Yet he was not without grace in company during the time he kept silent; but in answer to what was said his eyes too would make some sign, and his hand, and the nod of his head; nor did he appear unsmiling or sullen, for he kept his love of companions and his kindliness. This way of life, he says, was the most laborious he ever undertook, practised through five whole years; for though he had much to say, he had to say it not; though he heard much that angered him, he had to hear it not; and often, when moved to rebuke many, he had to say to himself, "Endure, my heart and tongue," and when discourses jarred upon him, he had to put off his refutations for the time.

He passed the years of his silence partly among the Pamphylians, partly in Cilicia; and walking through nations so given to luxury, he nowhere spoke, nor was he induced to mutter a word. Whenever he came upon a city in faction—and many were in faction over spectacles of no serious worth—coming forward and showing himself, and indicating by his hand and his face something of a rebuke to come, he would put an end to all disorder, and they would fall silent as in the mysteries. Now to restrain those who have rushed into faction over dancers and horses is no great matter, for those who behave disorderly over such things, if they look upon a man of worth, blush and check themselves and very readily come to their senses; but a city pressed by famine is not easily turned aside by a soothing and persuasive speech and stopped from its anger. Yet for Apollonius even silence sufficed with men so disposed. For he came to Aspendus in Pamphylia—this city stands upon the river Eurymedon, the third among those in that region—and bitter vetches were on sale, and people were feeding on whatever was necessary for food; for the powerful had shut up the grain and were holding it, to be sold dear from the country. Thereupon men of every age were roused against the magistrate, and were laying hold of fire to use against him, although he was clinging to the imperial statues, which were then more dreaded and more inviolable even than the Zeus at Olympia, being those of Tiberius, under whom a man is said to have been judged impious for having beaten his own slave who was carrying a silver drachma stamped with the image of Tiberius. So Apollonius, coming up to the magistrate, asked him by a sign what this meant; and when he said that he had done no wrong, but was being wronged together with the people, and that, unless he were granted a hearing, he would perish along with the people, Apollonius turned to those standing around and signed that they should hear him; and they not only kept silence, struck with awe of him, but even laid the fire upon the altars there. Then the magistrate, taking courage, said: "So-and-so and so-and-so," naming several, "are the cause of the famine that has set in; for they have taken away the grain and are guarding it, one in one part of the country, another in another." And when the Aspendians urged one another to go off to the farms, Apollonius signed to them not to do this, but rather to summon those who were at fault and to obtain the grain from them with their consent. And when they came, he came near to breaking into speech against them, moved by the tears of the multitude—for children too had flocked together and women, and the aged were lamenting as though they would die at once of famine—but honouring the rule of his silence, he wrote a rebuke on a tablet and gave it to the magistrate to read aloud. The rebuke ran thus: "Apollonius to the grain-dealers of Aspendus. The earth is the mother of all, for she is just; but you, being unjust, have made her the mother of yourselves alone; and if you do not cease, I will not suffer you to stand upon her." Frightened by this, they filled the market with grain, and the city came back to life.

He visited also great Antioch, when he had ceased from his silence, and entered the temple of Daphnaean Apollo, to which the Assyrians attach the Arcadian myth. For they say that the Daphne, daughter of Ladon, was transformed there, and a river Ladon flows for them, and a laurel tree is honoured among them—the one, that is, that took the maiden's place; and cypresses of immense height stand around the temple in a circle, and the place sends forth springs in plenty and at rest, in which they say Apollo bathes. There the earth has sent up a shoot of cypress, over Cyparissus, they say, an Assyrian youth; and the beauty of the plant confirms the transformation. Perhaps I seem to handle the matter too youthfully in telling such tales; but it is not for the sake of myth-telling that I do so. What, then, does my account intend? Apollonius, seeing that the temple was graceful but held no seriousness in it, only men half-barbarous and without culture, "Apollo," he said, "change these voiceless men into trees, that as cypresses at least they may make a sound." And surveying the springs, that they kept calm and that none of them murmured, "The voicelessness here," he said, "does not allow even the springs to speak." And looking toward the Ladon, "It was not your daughter alone who was transformed," he said, "but you too, by being thought a barbarian instead of a Greek and an Arcadian." When he resolved to discourse, he avoided the frequented and disorderly places, saying that he needed not men but real men, and he resorted to the more solemn places, and dwelt in those temples that were not closed. At sunrise he performed by himself certain rites, which he revealed only to those trained in silence for four years; and the time after that, if the city were Greek and the rites familiar, he would gather the priests and discourse about the gods and correct them, if anywhere they departed from established usage; but if the rites were barbarous and peculiar, he would learn who had founded them and on what occasion they were founded, and having inquired in what way these things were performed, and having suggested any wiser practice than what was done, he would go to his disciples and bid them ask what they wished. For he said that those who philosophize in this way should at dawn's beginning be in fellowship with the gods, as the day advances about the gods, and the time after that hold their converse on human affairs. And when he had told his companions all they asked, and had had enough of such converse, he would rise to the public discourse to all, not before midday, but when the day stood most fully fixed. And having discoursed as long as he thought sufficient, he would anoint himself, and after rubbing himself, throw himself into cold water, calling the baths "the old age of men." When Antioch was shut out from its baths for great offences, he said, "The emperor has granted you, evil as you are, to live more years." And when the Ephesians wished to stone their magistrate for not heating the baths, "You blame your magistrate," he said, "because you bathe badly; but I blame you because you bathe at all."

He cultivated a style of discourse that was not dithyrambic nor inflamed with poetic words, nor again over-refined and excessively Attic; for he thought it disagreeable to go beyond moderate Atticism. Nor did he give himself to subtle quibbling, nor draw out his discourses; nor did anyone hear him speak ironically or walking about among his hearers; but as though from a tripod, when he discoursed, he would say "I know," and "It seems to me," and "Where are you carrying yourselves?" and "You must know." And his opinions were brief and adamantine, his words proper and grafted to their subjects; and what he said had a ring, as of decrees pronounced from a sceptre. When one of the captious questioners asked him why he did not inquire, "Because," he said, "I inquired when I was a youth; but now I must not inquire, but teach what I have found." "How then, Apollonius," the man asked again, "will the wise man discourse?" "As a lawgiver," he said; "for the lawgiver must make into commands for the many those things of which he has persuaded himself." Thus did he pursue his work at Antioch, and turned to himself men most devoid of culture.

After this, taking thought for himself of a greater journey, he conceived a desire for the Indian nation and the wise men in it, who are said to be the Brahmans and the Hyrcanians, saying that it befitted a young man to travel abroad and to be carried beyond his own borders. He counted it a windfall too to visit the magi who dwell in Babylon and Susa, for he might learn their teaching also by using the road. And he disclosed his purpose to his disciples, who were seven. When they tried to advise him otherwise, in case he might somehow be drawn from this resolve, "I," he said, "have made the gods my counsellors, and have told you what I have decided; but I was making a test of you, whether you are strong for the same things as I. Since, then, you are soft, fare you well and study philosophy; but I must go where wisdom and my divine guide lead me." Having said this, he set out from Antioch with two attendants, who had belonged to his father—one a swift writer, the other a fair one.

And he came to ancient Nineveh, in which an image is set up after a barbarian fashion. It is in fact Io, daughter of Inachus, and small horns, as though just beginning, push out from her temples. While he stayed there and understood more about the image than the priests and prophets, Damis of Nineveh came to him—he whom I said at the outset travelled abroad with Apollonius and became his fellow-traveller in all wisdom and preserved much concerning the man. This Damis, admiring him and emulous of his journey, said: "Let us go, Apollonius, you following god, and I following you; for you would find me of much worth. If I know nothing else, at least I have been to Babylon, and I know the cities, however many there are, having gone up there not long ago, and the villages, in which there is much good; and indeed the languages of the barbarians, however many there are—and there is one of the Armenians, another of the Medes and Persians, another of the Cadusians, and I have learned them all." "But I, my friend," he said, "understand them all, though I have learned none." When the man of Nineveh marvelled, "Do not marvel," he said, "if I know all the tongues of men; for I know even what men keep silent." Then the Assyrian, when he heard this, made obeisance to him and looked on him as a divine being, and stayed with him, increasing in wisdom and remembering whatever he learned. The Assyrian's speech was of moderate quality, for it had no eloquence, since he had been educated among barbarians; but to record a discussion or a conversation, and to model whatever he heard or saw, and to compose a memoir of such things, he was quite competent, and pursued this best of all men. At any rate the tablet "Of the Scraps from the Manger" had this meaning for Damis: Damis wished that nothing of Apollonius should be unknown, but that if he ever let fall a careless word, this too should be written down. And it is worth telling what he said to the man who found fault with this work of his. For when a lazy and malicious man disparaged him, saying that he recorded other things rightly—all the man's maxims and opinions—but that in collecting these things so trivial he did much like dogs who feed on the crumbs that fall from the feast, Damis replied: "If there are feasts of the gods and the gods feed, surely they have servants too, whose care it is that not even the crumbs of ambrosia should be lost." Such a companion and lover did he meet with, with whom he travelled the greater part of his life.

As they passed into the country between the rivers, the customs-officer set over the Zeugma led them to the tariff-board and asked what they were taking out. And Apollonius said: "I am taking out temperance, justice, virtue, self-control, courage, discipline," stringing together in this way many such feminine nouns. The man, already eyeing his own profit, said, "Then register the slave-girls." "It is not lawful," he said; "for I am not taking out these as slave-girls, but as mistresses." Now the country between the rivers is formed by the Tigris and the Euphrates, which flow from Armenia and the foot of Taurus, and enclose a land in which there are cities, but for the most part villages, and Armenian and Arabian peoples, whom the rivers shut in; many of these are nomads and roam about, thinking themselves so much islanders that they say they go down to the sea when they walk to the rivers, and they make the circuit of the rivers the boundary of their land. For having rounded off the aforesaid land, the rivers run on to the same sea. There are those who say that the greater part of the Euphrates disappears into a marsh, and that this river ends in the earth. And some lay hold of a bolder account, saying that it flows beneath the earth and comes to light in Egypt and mingles with the Nile. For the sake of exactness, and that nothing written by Damis may be omitted by me, I should have liked to tell also of the things they took pains over in their journey through these barbarian lands; but the story drives us on to greater and more marvellous matters—not, however, so as to neglect these two: the courage with which Apollonius passed through barbarous and brigand nations, not yet under the Romans, and the wisdom by which, in the Arabian manner, he came to understand the language of animals. He learned this while travelling through these Arabians, who know it best of all men and practise it. For it is by now common among the Arabians to hear birds prophesying as oracles do; and this understanding they gain by feeding on the hearts, some say, or, as others say, the livers of serpents.

Having passed beyond Ctesiphon and come to the borders of Babylon, there was there a garrison set by the king, which one could not pass without being asked who he was and from what city, and on what errand he came. A satrap was set over this garrison, an "eye of the king," I suppose; for the Mede, having just come to power, did not allow himself to live without fear, but dreading both things that were and things that were not, he had fallen into terrors and alarms. So Apollonius and his company were brought before the satrap, who happened to have made himself a tent upon a covered carriage and to be driving out somewhere. And seeing a man full of squalor, he cried out like timid women and covered his face, and scarcely looking up at him, "From where," he asked, as though to a divinity, "have you been sent to us?" "By myself," he said, "in case you should somehow become real men, even against your will." Again he asked who he was that entered the king's country, and he said, "All the earth is mine, and it is permitted me to travel through it." "I will torture you," he said, "unless you tell." "Then, if with your own hands," he said, "may you yourself be tortured, for touching a man." When the eunuch was astonished at him, since he saw that he needed no interpreter, but understood the language without trouble and easily, "By the gods," he said, "who are you?"—now entreating, and changed in his tone. And Apollonius replied: "Since you have asked this moderately and not inhumanly, hear who I am. I am Apollonius of Tyana, and my road is to the king of the Indians, to inquire into the things there; but I should be glad to meet your king also, for those who have been with him say he is no mean man, if indeed this is Vardanes, who has now recovered the kingdom that was once lost to him." "He is the man, divine Apollonius," said he; "for we have long heard of you. And to a wise man he would yield even his golden throne, and would send each of you to the Indians upon a camel. And I make you my guest-friend, and give you of this money," showing him at the same time a treasure of gold, "as much as you wish to grasp, and not once, but ten times." When Apollonius declined the money, "Then take Babylonian wine," he said—"the king pours it for ten of us satraps—take an amphora, and roasted joints of pig and gazelle, and flour and loaves, and whatever you wish. For the road after this is for many stadia through villages not well supplied with food." And the eunuch, checking himself, said, "What, O gods, have I done! For hearing that the man neither feeds on animals nor drinks wine, I entertain him grossly and ignorantly." "But you may," he said, "entertain me lightly too, if you give bread and dried fruits." "I will give," he said, "leavened bread, and dates of the palm, amber-coloured and large; I will give also vegetables, all that the Tigris grows in its gardens." "But sweeter," said Apollonius, "are the wild and self-grown vegetables than those that are forced and cultivated." "Sweeter indeed," said the satrap; "but our land toward Babylon, being full of wormwood, grows them disagreeable and bitter." So at any rate he accepted the satrap's gift, and as he now departed, "My good man," he said, "do not only leave off well, but also begin well," gently admonishing him about his "I will torture you," and the words of barbarous bluster which he had heard at the outset.

When they had gone twenty stadia, they came upon a lioness that had been killed in the hunt; and the beast was large, larger than any I have seen, and the people who had flocked from the village were shouting, and, by Zeus, the hunters too, as though they saw some great wonder in it. And it was indeed a wonder; for when cut open she had eight whelps. Now as to the breeding of the lioness: lionesses are pregnant for six months, and give birth three times; the number of whelps at the first birth is three, at the second two, and when she comes to a third birth she brings forth a single whelp, large, I think, and fiercer in nature. For no heed should be paid to those who say that the whelps tear the wombs of lionesses and so come forth from the entrails. For nature, it seems, has made the offspring well-suited to the parent for the safety of the race. So Apollonius, gazing at the beast and considering it a long while, said: "Damis, the time of our stay with the king will be a year and eight months; for neither will he let us go sooner, nor would it be better for you to depart before this. One must reckon the whelps as months and the lioness as a year; for whole things must be compared with whole." "But what," said Damis, "will the sparrows in Homer say, which the serpent at Aulis devoured, eight of them, taking their mother as the ninth? Calchas, interpreting these, declared that Troy would be taken in nine years; so take care that, according to Homer and Calchas, our stay does not stretch to nine years." "Naturally, Damis," he said, "Homer likens the nestlings to years, for they had already come to be and exist; but I—how should I liken to years beasts that are unfinished and not yet born, and perhaps would never have been born? For things contrary to nature would never come to be, and, even if they do, they meet with swift destruction. But follow the argument, and let us go and pray to the gods who reveal these things."

As he advanced into the Cissian country and was now near Babylon, an apparition of a dream came to him, composed thus by the god who sent it. Fish, cast out of the sea, lay gasping on the land, uttering a lament like that of men, and bewailing that they had passed out of their proper element; and they besought a dolphin that swam by along the land to help them, being pitiable, like men in a foreign country weeping. Not at all dismayed by the dream, he reckoned up its meaning and how it stood; but wishing to disturb Damis—for he knew him to be among the more timid—he reported the vision to him, feigning fear, as though over the evil things he had seen. And Damis cried out as though he himself had seen these things, and tried to lead Apollonius back from going forward. "May we not too," he said, "like fish fallen out of our element, perish, and say many pitiable things in a foreign land, and falling perhaps into some helpless plight, supplicate some ruler or king, and he dishonour us, as the dolphins dishonour the fish." But Apollonius, laughing, said: "You do not yet philosophize, if you fear these things; but I will show you where the dream tends. The Eretrians inhabit this Cissian country, men who were once carried up from Euboea by Darius five hundred years ago; and they are said, just as the vision appeared, to have suffered the fate of fish in their capture; for they were all netted, as in a seine, and taken. The gods, then, seem to bid me go to them and take care of them, if I can. Perhaps too the souls of the Greeks, who drew the lot of dwelling here, are leading me to the benefit of their land. Let us go, then, turning aside from our road, asking only about the well beside which they dwell." This well is said to be a mixture of asphalt and oil and water; but when one draws it up and pours it out, these separate and are distinguished from one another. That he did go to Cissia he himself has acknowledged in what he writes to the sophist of Clazomenae; for he was so good and high-minded that, when he saw the Eretrians, he remembered the sophist and wrote to him both what he saw and what he did on their behalf; and throughout the whole letter he exhorts him to pity the Eretrians, and, whenever he should practise his discourse about them, not to refuse even to weep for them.

In harmony with this, Damis too has written about the Eretrians. For they dwell in Media, not far distant from Babylon, a day's journey for a swift runner; and the country is without cities, for Cissia is all villages, and there is also in it a nomad people, who seldom dismount from their horses. The settlement of the Eretrians lies in the middle of the rest, and is surrounded by a ditch from the river, which they themselves are said to have thrown about the village, making it a wall against the barbarians in Cissia. The land is soaked with asphalt and bitter to plant; and the people there are very short-lived, for the asphaltic drink settles into many of their inward parts. They are fed by a hill on the borders of the village, which, rising above the corrupted ground, they sow and regard as land. They say that they heard from the natives that seven hundred and eighty of the Eretrians were taken—not all of them fighting men, for there was among them a part that was female and aged, and there was also, I think, a part that was children; for the greater part of Eretria had fled up to Caphereus and the highest point of Euboea. About four hundred men were carried up, and women perhaps ten; the rest, beginning from Ionia and Lydia, perished as they were driven up-country. Since the hill furnished them stone-quarrying, and some of them knew the arts of working stone, they built Greek temples and a market-place such as was fitting, and set up altars—two to Darius, one to Xerxes, and several to Daridaeus. They continued, down to Daridaeus, for eighty-eight years after their capture, writing in the Greek manner; and their ancient tombs are inscribed "so-and-so, son of so-and-so," and the letters are Greek, but, they say, of a kind they had not yet seen; and ships are carved on the tombs, according as each man lived in Euboea practising a seafaring or even a purple-dyeing trade; and they say there was an elegy to read, written on the monument of sailors and ship-owners: "We who once sailed the deep-flowing swell of the Aegean lie here in the midst of the Ecbatanian plain. Farewell, Eretria, once renowned, our fatherland; farewell, Athens, neighbour of Euboea; farewell, dear sea." The tombs, fallen to ruin, Damis says that Apollonius restored and closed up, and poured libations and brought to them all the customary offerings, except for slaughtering or burning any victim; and weeping and filled with emotion, he uttered these words in their midst: "Eretrians, carried hither by the lot of fortune, you at least, though far from your own land, are buried; but those who cast you down here perished about your island, unburied, in the tenth year after you; for the gods reveal the disaster in hollow Euboea." And Apollonius, at the end of his letter to the sophist, says: "I took care, Scopelianus, of your Eretrians while still a young man, and helped, as far as I could, both their dead and their living." And how did he care for the living? The barbarians who dwelt near the hill used, when the Eretrians had sown it, to plunder the produce, coming about the summer, and the Eretrians had to go hungry, working the land for others. So when he came to the king, he obtained for them that they alone should have the use of the hill.

The things concerning this man at Babylon, and all that it is fitting to know about Babylon, I found to be as follows. Babylon is walled for four hundred and eighty stadia, so great is its circuit; and its wall is in height three half-plethra, and a little less than a plethron in breadth; it is cut by the river Euphrates with a resemblance of form, and a hidden bridge runs beneath it, joining unseen the palaces on either bank. For a woman named Medea, who once ruled there, is said to have bridged the river in a way no river was ever bridged before. For having heaped up beside the banks stones and bronze and asphalt and all that men have devised for underwater binding, she turned the stream into lakes; and then, when the river was already dry, she dug it out to a depth of two fathoms, fashioning a hollow tunnel, that it might come up, as out of the earth, into the palaces beside the banks; and she roofed it over to be level with the bed of the stream. The foundations stood firm, and the walls of the tunnel; but since the asphalt needed water to be turned to stone and to set, the Euphrates was let in upon the roof while it was still moist, and thus the bridge stood firm. As for the palaces, they are roofed with bronze and flash with light from it; the chambers and the men's halls and the porticoes are adorned, some with silver, some with golden hangings, some with gold itself, as with paintings; and the figures woven on the robes come to them from Greek stories—Andromedas and Amymones and Orpheus in many places. They take pleasure in Orpheus, honouring him perhaps for his tiara and trousers, but not for his music or the songs with which he charmed. Woven there too is Datis dragging Naxos out of the sea, and Artaphernes besieging Eretria, and of the deeds of Xerxes those he claimed as victories; for there are Athens taken, and Thermopylae, and things still more Median—rivers drawn off the land, and the bridge over the sea, and how Athos was cut through. They say too that they came upon a men's hall whose roof was carried up into the form of a dome, likened to a sort of heaven, and roofed over with sapphire stone—the stone is of the deepest blue and heavenly to look upon—and images of the gods they worship are set up aloft and appear golden, as out of the ether. There the king gives judgment; and four golden wrynecks hang from the roof, putting him in mind of Adrasteia and of not exalting himself above men. These the magi themselves say they tune, frequenting the palace, and they call them "the tongues of the gods."

About the magi Apollonius has said enough; for he was with them and learned some things, and went away having taught some things. But Damis does not know what discourses passed between the man and the magi, for he was forbidden to accompany him when he went to them. He says, however, that Apollonius visited the magi at midday and about midnight; and that he once asked, "What are the magi?" And he answered: "Wise men—but not in all things."

But this was later. When he came to Babylon, the satrap set over the great gates, learning that he came for the sake of inquiry, held out to him a golden image of the king, which, unless one made obeisance to it, it was not lawful to pass within. For an ambassador coming from the ruler of the Romans is under no such necessity; but one who comes from barbarians, or who would explore the country, unless he first paid homage to the image, was held to be dishonoured and was turned back; and among the barbarians such silly matters are entrusted to a satrap. So when he saw the image, "Who is this?" he asked. And hearing that it was the king, he said: "This man whom you worship—if he should be praised by me and judged a true gentleman, will gain great things"; and saying this he went on through the gates. The satrap, marvelling at him, followed and, taking hold of the hand of Apollonius, asked through an interpreter his name and his house and his pursuit and on what errand he came; and writing these things down on a tablet, and his dress and his appearance, he bade him wait there, while he himself ran—

—in person to the men who are called the king's ears, and described Apollonius, declaring beforehand that he neither wished to make obeisance nor was at all like a man. They bade him bring the man, honouring him and doing nothing by way of insult; and when he came, the eldest of them asked him what he had learned that he should despise the king. "I have not yet despised him," he said. "But would you despise him?" he asked again. "Yes, by Zeus," he said, "if, on coming to know him, I do not find him a true gentleman." "And what gifts do you bring him?" And when he said "Courage and justice and the like," the man asked, "As to one who has them not?" "No, by Zeus," he said, "but as to one who is to learn to use them, if he has them." "And indeed," said the other, "by using these the king recovered the kingdom you see, which had been lost to him, and brought back this his house, not without labour, nor lightly." "And how many years is it now since he recovered his rule?" "We are entering the third," he said, "and now, I think, two months." Then Apollonius, raising up his thought, as was his way, said: "O bodyguard, or whatever it is right to call you, Darius, the father of Cyrus and Artaxerxes, who held this palace, they say, for sixty years, when he suspected the end of his life was near, is said to have sacrificed to Justice, and to have said, 'O mistress, whoever you are'—as though he had long desired justice, but did not yet know her, nor thought he possessed her; and he educated his two sons so ignorantly that they took up arms against one another, and one was wounded and the other killed by his brother. But you, perhaps, would have me believe that this man—who does not yet, it may be, even know how to sit upon the royal throne—has gathered together all the virtues at once, and you exalt him, bringing the gain, if he should grow better, to yourself, not to me." Then the barbarian, looking at the man beside him, said: "It is a godsend; some god leads this man here, for a good man consorting with a good man will show us our king far better and wiser and more agreeable; for these qualities are seen shining through the man." So they ran in, bearing the good news to all, that a man stood at the king's doors, wise and Greek and a good counsellor.

When this was announced to the king, he happened to be sacrificing, with the magi present, for the sacred rites are performed by them; and calling one of them, he said: "The dream has come true that I was telling you today, of him who watched me in my sleep." Now such a dream had come to the king. He seemed to be Artaxerxes, the son of Xerxes, and to have changed into that man's form, and he was greatly afraid lest his affairs had now come to a change, interpreting in this way the change of form. But when he heard that the newcomer was a Greek and a wise man, Themistocles the Athenian came into his mind, who once, having come from the Greeks, consorted with Artaxerxes and made himself of much worth to him, and proved of great service. And holding out his right hand, "Call him," he said; "for it would be best to begin with him, sacrificing and praying together."

So he entered, escorted by many—for they thought to do the king a favour by this too, having learned that he was pleased at his coming—but as he passed through the palace, he did not so much as glance at any of the things men wonder at, but, as though merely travelling, he went through them; and calling Damis, "You asked me the other day," he said, "what was the name of the Pamphylian woman who is said to have associated with Sappho and to have composed the hymns they sing to Artemis of Perga, in the Aeolian and Pamphylian manner." "I asked," he said, "but you did not tell me the name." "I did not, my good fellow," he said; "but I explained to you the modes of the hymns and the names, and how the Aeolian was carried over into the loftiest and most peculiar Pamphylian style; then we passed to another matter, and you no longer asked me about the name. Well, this wise woman is called Damophyle, and she is said, in the manner of Sappho, to have gained maiden disciples, and to have composed poems, some of them love-poems, others hymns. The hymns to Artemis are parodied by her and sung from the Sapphic measures." How far he was from being astonished at the king and his pomp, he made plain by not even thinking such things worthy of his eyes, but discoursing of other matters, and seeming to think that he saw those things too.

The king, seeing him approach from afar—for the courtyard of the temple had some length—talked with those near him, as though recognizing the man; and when he was already close, raising a great shout, "This," he said, "is Apollonius, whom my brother Megabates says he saw at Antioch, admired and worshipped by men of worth; and he painted him for me then just such as he comes now." And when Apollonius approached and greeted him, the king addressed him in the Greek tongue and bade him sacrifice with him; he was about to slay to the Sun a white horse of the finest Nisaean breed, adorned with trappings as for a procession. But Apollonius, taking up the word, said: "Do you, O king, sacrifice in your own way, but allow me to sacrifice in mine"; and taking up some frankincense, "O Sun," he said, "send me over so much of the earth as seems good to you and to me, and may I come to know good men, but may I neither learn to know base men, nor base men me." And saying this he cast the frankincense into the fire, and watched how it rose and where it grew turbid and in how many points it darted up, and touching the fire at times, where it appeared well-omened and pure, "Now, O king," he said, "sacrifice according to your own ancestral rites; for these are mine."

And he withdrew from the sacrifice, so as not to share in the blood. After the sacrifice he came up and said: "O king, do you know the whole Greek tongue, or a little of it, perhaps, for the sake of courtesy, and that you may not seem disagreeable if some Greek should come?" "The whole," he said, "as well as this native tongue; and say what you wish, for it is for this, I suppose, that you ask." "For this," he said, "then hear. The aim of my journey is the Indians; but I did not wish to pass even you by, both because I heard that you were a man such as I now see you already from the claw, and because I desired to behold the wisdom which is native and practised among you by the magi—whether they are wise in divine matters, as they are said to be. My own wisdom is that of Pythagoras of Samos, a man who taught me to serve the gods in this way, and to understand them whether seen or unseen, and to hold converse with the gods, and to be clothed in this earth-born wool—for it was not shorn from a sheep, but pure springs from pure things, the gift of water and earth, this linen; and the very letting-grow of my hair I practised from Pythagoras, and the keeping pure of animal food comes to me from his wisdom. A fellow-drinker, then, or partner in ease or luxury I could never be to you nor to any other; but of cares perplexing and hard to solve I could give solutions, knowing not only what should be done, but also foreknowing it." These things Damis says the man discoursed; but Apollonius has made them into a letter, and many others of the things he said in conversation he reshaped into letters.

When the king said that he rejoiced and was more delighted at his coming than if he had added the wealth of the Persians and Indians to what he had, and that he made him his guest-friend and partner of the royal roof, "If I, O king," he said, "should ask you, on coming to my native city Tyana, to dwell where I dwell, would you have consented to dwell there?" "By Zeus, no," he said, "unless I were to dwell in a house large enough to receive splendidly my spearmen and my bodyguards and myself." "Then the same argument holds from me too," he said; "for if I dwell beyond my station, I shall live ill, since excess troubles the wise more than deficiency troubles you. Let me, then, be entertained by some private man who has as much as I, and I will be with you as much as you wish." The king consented, lest he should unawares do something disagreeable to him, and Apollonius lodged with a Babylonian who was good and otherwise noble. As he was now dining, a eunuch, one of those who carry messages, stood by, and greeting the man said: "The king presents you with ten gifts, and makes you master of naming them; but he asks you not to ask small things, for he wishes to display his magnanimity to you and to us." Praising the offer, "When, then, must I ask?" he inquired. "Tomorrow," he said; and at once he went round to all the king's friends and kinsmen, bidding them be present when the man should ask and be honoured. Damis says that he understood Apollonius would ask for nothing, having observed his character and knowing that he prayed to the gods such a prayer as this: "O gods, grant me to have little and to need nothing." Yet seeing him standing intent and like one in thought, he supposed that he would ask, but was testing within himself what he meant to ask. And Apollonius, now in the evening, said: "Damis, I am considering with myself why ever the barbarians think eunuchs chaste, and bring them into the women's chambers." "But this, Apollonius," he said, "is plain even to a child; for since the gelding takes from them the power of sexual love, the women's chambers are thrown open to them, even though they should wish to sleep with the women." "And do you think," he said, "that loving, or consorting with women, has been cut out of them?" "Both," he said; "for if the part by which the body is goaded to frenzy is quenched, the love of it would come upon no one." But he, pausing a little, said: "Tomorrow, Damis, you shall learn that even eunuchs love, and that the desire which they admit through their eyes is not withered out of them, but remains warm and ready to kindle; for something must happen that will refute your argument. And if there were some human art, tyrannous and able to thrust such things out of the mind, I should not, I think, ever have set down eunuchs among those of chaste character, since they are forced into chastity and led by a violent art into not loving. For chastity is to be drawn and impelled and yet not be overcome by sexual things, but to abstain and to show oneself master of this frenzy."

So Damis, taking up the word, said: "These things we shall consider again, Apollonius; but as to what you should answer tomorrow to the king's offer, splendid as it is, it becomes you to have thought it out. For you will ask, perhaps, for nothing; but take care, and guard against this, that you do not seem to refuse what the king gives out of some other kind of pride, considering where on earth we are, and that we lie, as it were, in his hand. And we must guard against slanders, that we use disdain; and we must know that now indeed we have provision enough to send us to the Indians, but on our way back from there this would not suffice, and other could not be got." And with such art he sought to warm him—

—not to think it beneath him to take whatever the king gave. But Apollonius, as though helping him in his argument, said: "And will you neglect, Damis, the examples? Among which are these: that Aeschines, the son of Lysanias, went off to Dionysius in Sicily for the sake of money; that Plato is said to have measured Charybdis three times for the sake of Sicilian wealth; that Aristippus of Cyrene, and Helicon of Cyzicus, and Phyton of Rhegium, when he was in exile, sank themselves so deep into the treasures of Dionysius that they hardly came up again from there. And indeed they say that Eudoxus of Cnidus, having once come to Egypt, both confessed that he came for money and discoursed with the king about it; and, not to slander too many, that Speusippus the Athenian became so much a lover of money that he went revelling to Macedonia for the wedding of Cassander, having composed frigid verses, and sang these in public for money. But I hold, Damis, that the wise man runs more risk than seafarers and those who fight in arms; for envy advances upon him whether he is silent or speaks, whether he strains himself or relaxes, whether he passes anything by or approaches anyone, whether he addresses a man or does not address him. The man must be fenced about, and must know that the wise man, overcome by sloth or anger or love or fondness for drink, or acting more hastily than the moment required, might perhaps even find pardon; but he who subjects himself to money would neither be pardoned nor be anything but hated, as one who has gathered all vices together in himself. For he would not be overcome by money, unless he were first overcome by his belly and dress and wine and the being carried away to courtesans. And you, perhaps, think that to do wrong in Babylon is a lesser thing than to do wrong at Athens or Olympia or Delphi, and you do not consider that to a wise man Greece is everywhere, and that the wise man will neither hold nor reckon any place to be desert or barbarian, living as he does under the eyes of virtue, and looking upon few men, but being himself looked upon by ten thousand eyes. And if you were the companion of one of those athletes, Damis, who train for wrestling and the pancratium, would you think it right that he should be noble and good if he competed at the Olympia and went to Arcadia, and, by Zeus, if the Pythia or the Nemea were held, should take care of his body, since these contests are conspicuous and the lists are in a renowned part of Greece, but that, if Philip should hold an Olympic festival after taking cities, or his son Alexander hold a contest over his own victories, he should now prepare his body the worse and not be eager to win, since he will compete at Olynthus or in Macedonia or in Egypt, and not among Greeks and in the lists there?" By these words, Damis says, he was so affected that he covered his face for what he himself happened to have said, and begged Apollonius to pardon him, in that, not yet having understood him, he had ventured upon such counsel and persuasion. But he, restoring his courage, said: "Take heart; for I said these things not to rebuke you, but to sketch for you my own mind."

When the eunuch came and summoned him to the king, "I will come," he said, "when my affairs with the gods are well." So having sacrificed and prayed, he went off, gazed at and admired for his appearance. When he came in, "I give you," said the king, "ten gifts, considering you such a man as none has yet come hither from the Greeks." And he, taking up the word, said: "I will not, O king, decline all of them, but one, which I choose in place of many tens, I will ask for eagerly"; and at the same time he went through the story of the Eretrians, taking it up from Datis. "I ask, then," he said, "that these wretched men be not cut off from their borders and their hill, but that they have to dwell in the measure of land which Darius allowed them; for it would be terrible, if, having fallen out of their own land, they should not even hold the land they have in its place." So the king, consenting, said: "The Eretrians, down to yesterday, were enemies of me and of my fathers, since they once took up arms against us, and were overlooked, that their race might be wiped out; but henceforth they shall be enrolled as friends, and a good man shall be their satrap, who will deal justly with the land. But why," he said, "will you not take the nine gifts?" "Because, O king," he said, "I have not yet gained friends here." "And do you yourself need nothing?" he asked. "The dried fruits," he said, "and the loaves, which feast me pleasantly and splendidly."

While they were talking thus with one another, a clamour of eunuchs and women together broke out from the palace. A eunuch had been caught lying with one of the king's concubines and doing all that adulterers do; and the keepers of the women's quarters were dragging him along, pulling him by the hair, in the way the king's slaves are dragged. When the eldest of the eunuchs said that he had long before perceived the man's love for the woman, and had forbidden him to converse with her or to touch her neck or hand, or to adorn her alone among those within, but that now he had even found him lying with her and playing the man toward the woman, Apollonius looked at Damis, as though the argument had been proved which they had discussed about even eunuchs loving; but the king said to those present: "It is shameful, gentlemen, that, with Apollonius present, we, and not he, should pronounce upon chastity. What, then, do you bid this man suffer, Apollonius?" "What else than to live?" he said, answering contrary to the opinion of all. The king, flushing, said: "Then is he not worthy of many deaths, creeping thus into my bed?" "But it was not for pardon, O king," he said, "that I said this, but for a punishment that will wear him away. For if he lives sick, and laying hold of the impossible, and neither food nor drink will please him, nor the spectacles that delight you and those with you, and his heart leaps as he often starts up from sleep—which they say happens most to those in love—what wasting will so consume him, what hunger so crush his entrails? And unless he be one of those who cling to life, he will himself, O king, one day beg you even to kill him, or will kill himself, lamenting much this present day, on which he did not die at once." Such, then, was this saying of Apollonius, and so wise and gentle, that the king remitted the death of the eunuch.

When he was once about to hunt the beasts in the parks, in which lions and bears and leopards are kept by the barbarians, the king asked Apollonius to be present with him at the hunt. But he said: "You forget, O king, that I am not present even when you sacrifice; and besides, it is no pleasure to attack beasts that have been tormented and enslaved against their own nature." And when the king asked him how he might rule firmly and securely, "By honouring many," he said, "but trusting few." Once, when the governor of Syria sent an embassy about two villages, I think, near the Zeugma, declaring that they had of old been subject to Antiochus and Seleucus, but now belonged to the king, being possessions of the Romans, and that the Arabians and Armenians did not trouble the villages, while the king, overstepping so great a tract of land, was enjoying their produce, as though they were his rather than the Romans', the king, withdrawing the ambassadors, said: "These villages, Apollonius, were granted to my forefathers by the kings I have named, for the feeding of the beasts, which, when caught among us, pass over into their land by way of the Euphrates; but they, as though forgetting this, lay hold of new and unjust claims. What, then, seems to you the meaning of the embassy?" "Moderate, O king," he said, "and fair, if they wish to obtain with your consent what they could hold even against your will, being within their own territory." And he added that one should not quarrel with the Romans over villages, of which private men perhaps possess larger, nor take up war even over great matters. When the king was ill, Apollonius, being present, discoursed so many and such divine things about the soul that the king revived and said to those present that Apollonius had wrought in him a freedom from care not only about his kingdom, but also about death.

When the king once showed him the tunnel under the Euphrates and said, "What does the wonder seem to you?" Apollonius, belittling the marvel, said: "It would be a wonder, O king, if you walked on foot through the river, being so deep and impassable." And when he showed him the walls at Ecbatana too, and said that these were the dwelling of the gods, "Of gods there is no dwelling at all," he said; "and whether of men, I do not know; for the city of the Lacedaemonians, O king, is built without walls." And indeed, when the king had given some judgment to villages and was priding himself before Apollonius that he had heard the case for two days, "You found justice slowly," he said. And when treasure once came in abundance from the subject country, the king opened his treasuries and showed the man the money, trying to lead him into a desire for wealth; but he, marvelling at none of what he saw, said: "These things, O king, are money to you, but to me they are chaff." "What, then," he said, "should I do to use them well?" "Use them," he said, "for you are a king."

Having said many such things to the king, and finding him eager to do what he advised, and having had enough too of his fellowship with the magi, "Come, Damis," he said, "let us go to the Indians. For those who sailed to the Lotus-Eaters were carried away from their own ways by the food; but we, though we taste none of the things here, sit longer than is reasonable and fitting." "I too think this best," said Damis; "but since I had in mind the time you considered in the matter of the lioness, I was waiting for it to be fulfilled. It has not yet wholly run out, for it is now a year and four months with us; but if we were to set off now, would it be well?" "The king will not let us go, Damis," he said, "before the eighth month ends; for you see that he is good, and too good to rule over barbarians."

When it seemed best at last to depart, and the king at length consented to let them go, Apollonius remembered the gifts which he had deferred until friends should be his, and said: "Most excellent king, I have done my host no service, and I owe wages to the magi; take care of them, therefore, and be zealous on my behalf for men who are wise and very well disposed toward you." Overjoyed, the king said: "Tomorrow I will show you these men enviable and judged worthy of great things; but since you need nothing of mine, at least permit these men to take money from me, and whatever they wish"—pointing to Damis and his company. And when they too turned away from the offer, "Do you see, O king," he said, "my hands, how many they are and how like to one another?" "But at least take a guide," said the king, "and camels to ride on, for the length of the road is too great to walk the whole of it." "Let this be, O king," he said; "for they say the road is impassable unless one rides thus, and besides, the animal is easily fed and simple to keep, where there is no fodder. And water too, I think, we must lay in and carry in skins, as we do the wine." "For three days," said the king, "the land is without water; after that there is great abundance of rivers and springs. You must travel by the road toward the Caucasus, for the supplies there are abundant and the land friendly." And when the king asked him what he would bring back to him from there, "A pleasing gift, O king," he said; "for if the company of those men makes me wiser, I shall come back to you better than I now am." The king embraced him as he said this, and "Come back," he said; "for the gift is great."